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    <h2>Auto Aero Colors (AAClr)</h2>

    <p>
        Windows 8 has a new feature where the Aero colors can be
        <a href="http://www.withinwindows.com/2011/04/06/windows-8-secrets-aero-auto-colorization/">
        automatically adjusted according to the selected wallpaper</a>.
    </p>
    <p>
        This seems to be a nice feature, and there's even a tool available
        that offers that feature for Windows 7: <a href="http://aura.codeplex.com/">Aura</a>.
    </p>
    <p>
        But there are some things about Aura that bother me, so I hacked
        together my own tool which offers that feature.
    </p>
    <p>
        Unlike Aura, AAClr is written in plain C++ and doesn't use the .NET
        Framework. For tools that are supposed to be started automatically
        on logon, this ensures that the whole startup time doesn't increase
        by several seconds.
    </p>
    <p>
        AAClr also detects changes in wallpapers by catching events from
        the system and doesn't use timers that access the wallpaper file
        several times a second (like Aura does). That means that AAClr is
        idle most of the time and only wakes up when necessary.
    </p>
    <p>
        And about resource usage: AAClr uses less than 2MB of private
        bytes - I think that's not too much.
    </p>
    <p>
        I've put the AAClr source code into the <a href="/StExBar.html">StExBar</a>
        repository since it's too small to justify creating its own project for it.
        You can browse the source code <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/stefanstools/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/Misc/AAClr/">here</a>.
    </p>
    <p>
        A compiled executable can be found on the
        <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/stefanstools/files/AAClr/">download page</a>.
    </p>
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